Brief History from the National Park Service

Ancestral Pueblo People at Aztec Ruins

Early settlers mistakingly thought that people from the Aztec
Empire in Mexico created these striking buildings. They named the site
Aztec, a misnomer that persisted even after it became clear that
the builders were the ancestors of many Southwestern tribes. The people who
built at Aztec and other places throughout the Southwest were called
Anasazi for many years. Archeologists had adopted a word from the
Navajo language, that they understood to mean old people, and then
popularized its use. Most Pueblo people today prefer that we use the term
ancestral Pueblo to refer to their ancestors.

An Ancient Community

Aztec Ruins, built and used over a 200-year period, is the
largest ancestral Pueblo community in the Animas River valley. Concentrated on
and below a terrace overlooking the Animas River, the people at Aztec built
several multi-story buildings called great houses and many smaller
structures. Associated with each great house was a great
kivaa large circular chamber used for ceremonies. Nearby are three
unusual tri-wall structuresabove ground kivas encircled by
three concentric walls. In addition, they modified the landscape with dozens of
linear swales called roads, earthen berms, and platforms.

An interesting 700 yard trail leads visitors through the West
Ruin, an excavated great house that had at least 400 interconnected rooms built
around an open plaza. Its massive sandstone walls tower over 30 feet. Many
rooms contain the original pine, spruce, and aspen beams hauled from distant
mountains. Archeologists excavated and reconstructed the Great Kiva in the West
Ruin plaza, and it now evokes a sense of the original sacred space.

The construction at Aztec shows a strong influence from Chaco
Canyon, the site of a major ancestral Pueblo community to the south. Aztec may
have been an outlying community of Chaco, a sort of ancillary place connected
to the center to distribute food and goods to the surrounding population. Or it
mayhave been a center in its own right as Chacos influence waned after
1100.

Excavation of the West Ruin in the early 1900s uncovered
thousands of well-preserved artifacts that provide glimpses into the lives of
the ancestral Pueblo people . A remarkable variety of food remains, stone and
wood tools, cotton and feather clothing, fiber sandals and mats, pottery, and
jewelry made of turquoise, obsidian, and shell reveal much about their use of
local resources and trade with others.

About 1300 the ancestral Pueblo people left the region,
migrating southeast to join existing communities along the Rio Grande, south to
the Zuni area, or west to join the Hopi villages in Arizona.

Aztec Ruins National Monument connects people of the past with
people and traditions of today. Many Southwestern American Indians today
maintain deep spiritual ties with this ancestral site through oral tradition,
prayer, and ceremony. The site offers visitors opportunities to learn about
these remarkable people and their descendants and to forge connections with the
monuments timeless landscape and stories.